13
chapter on the threat of global warming to the well-being of coral reefs worldwide.
Stan Riggs then describes his love affair with coastal geology and education over
70 years; many, many students have had successful careers as geologists due to the
things they have learned (not just geological) under Stan’s “soggy groggy” tutelage.
In the penultimate chapter, oceanographer and educator Joy Moses Hall reflects on
the chapters in this book and provides thoughts that will, hopefully, encourage and
enable the reader to both embrace and coexist with the inevitable coastal change that
will come our way. We end with an Afterword – a brief essay by the editor that
describes an unforgettable experience during his doctoral student days that greatly
impressed upon him the incredible power of the oceans. It is that power, and the
changes that it effects, that makes the coastal zone such an interesting and exciting
place to live, work, study and play.
Important Postscript (More Caution!)
I’ve noted above that science progresses. We learn new things and old interpretations
might need to be modified or even rejected. Sometimes we might not like what we
learn. My story about the two tiny fossil snail shells in the buff-colored rock took
another turn in 2007 in a paper that I coauthored with a multinational team of geologists. In the 23 years since I had collected that rock, no other fossils had been found in
samples from the dolostone outcrop (although few people had looked at those specific
outcrops, similar rocks, in similar stratigraphic sequences, and of similar age, occur
on several continents, and none -to my knowledge- have yielded fossils like the two I
had found in Senegal). Furthermore, phosphate had not been recorded in the Walidiala
Valley dolostone and yet the fossils were phosphatized. The weight of evidence led us
to conclude that it was “unwise” to use the two fossils to assign an early Cambrian age
for the dolostone when all other evidence suggests the dolostone was of late
Precambrian age. What have I learned from this? Never pick up a loose rock!
You might think that is the end of this tale, but it is not! In 2013 a research paper
argued that Aldanella was not a snail (class Gastropoda, phylum Mollusca).
Amazing fossils of Aldanella attleborensis from Pennsylvania and Siberia, even
though they are more than 500 million years old, preserve phosphatized soft parts
including hair-like structures called chaetae that were part of a locomotory organ
that indicates a swimming lifestyle. These are not characteristics of early gastropods
(although some tiny members of this group called pteropods began to swim in oceanic surface waters ~72–79 million years ago and continue to do so today). It was
suggested in the 2013 paper that Aldanella belonged to an enigmatic group of
extinct organisms called the hyoliths (class Hyolitha, phylum Mollusca). So, my
tiny coiled fossils, now in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, are not
even snail shells! Serendipity can be very complicated! But we learn new things and
science progresses.
1 A Cautionary Scientific Tale and an Introduction to This Book
chapter on the threat of global warming to the well-being of coral reefs worldwide.
Stan Riggs then describes his love affair with coastal geology and education over
70 years; many, many students have had successful careers as geologists due to the
things they have learned (not just geological) under Stan’s “soggy groggy” tutelage.
In the penultimate chapter, oceanographer and educator Joy Moses Hall reflects on
the chapters in this book and provides thoughts that will, hopefully, encourage and
enable the reader to both embrace and coexist with the inevitable coastal change that
will come our way. We end with an Afterword – a brief essay by the editor that
describes an unforgettable experience during his doctoral student days that greatly
impressed upon him the incredible power of the oceans. It is that power, and the
changes that it effects, that makes the coastal zone such an interesting and exciting
place to live, work, study and play.
Important Postscript (More Caution!)
I’ve noted above that science progresses. We learn new things and old interpretations
might need to be modified or even rejected. Sometimes we might not like what we
learn. My story about the two tiny fossil snail shells in the buff-colored rock took
another turn in 2007 in a paper that I coauthored with a multinational team of geologists. In the 23 years since I had collected that rock, no other fossils had been found in
samples from the dolostone outcrop (although few people had looked at those specific
outcrops, similar rocks, in similar stratigraphic sequences, and of similar age, occur
on several continents, and none -to my knowledge- have yielded fossils like the two I
had found in Senegal). Furthermore, phosphate had not been recorded in the Walidiala
Valley dolostone and yet the fossils were phosphatized. The weight of evidence led us
to conclude that it was “unwise” to use the two fossils to assign an early Cambrian age
for the dolostone when all other evidence suggests the dolostone was of late
Precambrian age. What have I learned from this? Never pick up a loose rock!
You might think that is the end of this tale, but it is not! In 2013 a research paper
argued that Aldanella was not a snail (class Gastropoda, phylum Mollusca).
Amazing fossils of Aldanella attleborensis from Pennsylvania and Siberia, even
though they are more than 500 million years old, preserve phosphatized soft parts
including hair-like structures called chaetae that were part of a locomotory organ
that indicates a swimming lifestyle. These are not characteristics of early gastropods
(although some tiny members of this group called pteropods began to swim in oceanic surface waters ~72–79 million years ago and continue to do so today). It was
suggested in the 2013 paper that Aldanella belonged to an enigmatic group of
extinct organisms called the hyoliths (class Hyolitha, phylum Mollusca). So, my
tiny coiled fossils, now in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, are not
even snail shells! Serendipity can be very complicated! But we learn new things and
science progresses.
1 A Cautionary Scientific Tale and an Introduction to This Book